Tsedaye Makonnen is an interdisciplinary artist-curator whose work spans across performance, sculpture, textile, installation, and film. Born in Washington, D.C., to Ethiopian immigrants, she draws on her East African heritage, Black feminist theory, diasporic knowledge systems and spiritual technologies, birthwork and migration studies to create works that center social justice and foster greater global equity. Closely connected to, yet distinct from, her sculptural work, Makonnen’s performance practice has received international recognition. In 2019, as a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, she staged When Drowning Is the Best Option at the Venice Biennale, a performance addressing global migration and displacement, honoring Black life. She returned in 2022 as part of Loophole of Retreat: Venice, a global Black woman convening organized in conjunction with Simone Leigh’s U.S. Pavilion, contributing a multimedia performance that centered Blackness across bodies of water and borders while exploring care, freedom, and diasporic world-making. Her installations have also been included in major museum exhibitions in the United States, including Africa and Byzantium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Ethiopia at the Crossroads at the Walters Art Museum. She currently has a solo exhibition titled Sanctuary :: መቅደስ :: Mekdes at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.